Coming Home
by Himura Seraphina
Summary: Between a heroes welcome and a bon voyage, Kirk makes his place on the enterprise. Short, sweet, sappy fic written for an lj promt. Kirk/McCoy but can be read as a friendship fic. T rating more for the f*bomb than content.


**Coming Home **

**Fandom: **Star Trek 2009 (also known as XI, Reboot, AOS and nu!)

**Pairing: **Kirk/McCoy (subtle, but there)

**A/N: ****Written for this****promt****at the ****jim_and_bones**** community (which is locked, but you **_**must**_** join if you want lots of yummy Kirk/McCoy goodness and daily Karl Urban and Chris Pine photos and tons of comment fic, also known as comment porn). Just a short little fic set before the launch of the **_**Enterprise**_** on her new mission under her hawt new captain.**

Jim Kirk had moved a lot in his life – had, in fact, considered it a matter of self-preservation. Keep moving, keep busy, don't settle anywhere, don't make any place home; that way, it couldn't be taken away. Don't stay in one place, don't get attached, don't get your heart broken.

Then he'd roomed with Leonard McCoy, a good son of the South. Bones might be a neat freak (_please, like you aren't ridiculously anal, kid, don't even try to pretend otherwise_) but he collected _things_ and made any place he settled _home_.

So slowly, warily, Jim had tucked himself into the nest Bones made of their rooms. Real books, the one thing he'd permitted himself to collect and covet and keep, found their way onto the shelves that had mysteriously (_don't be so damn suspicious, kid_) appeared one day when he was in class. Neither of them were much for knickknacks, but Bones had a small collection of antique medical instruments (_hyposprays don't seem like such a bad deal now, do they?_) and Jim had found himself in possession of a growing collection of knives and daggers from Earth and other other worlds (_how many ways do you need to be able to gut someone?_). But the real surprise had been the holo image stills.

He'd never been one for photos or holos. Of course, there were so few people that truly mattered, that he _wanted _to remember. For years, the chip with holos of his parents wedding, of he and Sam as kids, the recording of Hoshi cursing fluently in twenty-six languages with a smile on her face, of his father's last words (hacked, at considerable risk, from Starfleet's files when he was sixteen and angry and didn't give a _fuck_ in any language) had resided secretly in his belongings, hidden even from himself sometimes. He didn't even look at any of them – just kept the chip close, knowing it was there, in a hidden pocket of his jacket, proof that at least some people had loved James T. Kirk – even if so few of them survived.

It was only in the safety of his shared dorm that he pulled up the files on that chip – taking stills of those holo images Slowly, one after another, they'd made there way onto the shelves by his books, that walls next to Bones' images of Georgia summers and Joanna and David and Eleanor and four generations (_stop laughing, infant, it's a family reunion, and believe me, the pie _alone_ is worth all that making nice_) of McCoys. By the beginning of their second year, he was used to feeling a little like he was home – even if he stopped himself from thinking the word for fear of jinxing it.

Now he was moving again, and this time it was a pleasure and not a deliberate amputation or a loss or a desperate bid to stay unattached. And if, when he found homes for his belongings in the Captain's quarters of the _USS Enterprise, _he missed the way his things and Bones' mingled...well, it wouldn't be long before their belongings began to migrate between each others quarters. It was who they were, two damaged people who were a little less broken together, unable to stay out of each others space or heads or lives (_does the term 'dangerously codependent' mean anything to you two?_) and soon enough Bones' clothes would be in his closet and Jim's books would be stacked next to the doctor's couch.

His rooms were _his_, Jim's, not Captain Kirk's, where he could be who he was (way, _way_ over his head, Jesus _what_ was Command thinking?) and not have to be in charge and confident and all knowing because there were four hundred and thirty lives in his hands (_I can't keep myself out of trouble, how the hell am I supposed to keep them all alive and safe and happy? - you're great at taking care of other people, kid, it's _yourself_ you can't look after; that's why it's my job_). His ready room was different, it was Captain Kirk's, but he refused to let it be sterile or formal or boring, especially since he'd spend so much time staring at those walls. Captain he might be, but he couldn't be formal or aloof from his crew, even if he hadn't gone through the academy with two-thirds of them. He kept Pike's comfortable, masculine desk and chair and seating arrangements (_consider them a gift, Jim, and stop arguing_) and found shelves to match, tucking them in around his desk and filling them with books of poetry and plays and long-dead writers from a dozen worlds, well-thumbed and worn from use.

The walls, though, haunted him; blank and empty except for the wall of screens revealing space. Empty like so many of the walls he'd lived inside, and it made him feel empty too, as if in sympathy. When he came in the next day and found a stack of holoframes on his desk (_please, why would I do that? do I look like a fairy-fucking-godfather?_), he made the space _his_.

The image of the sun setting over Shir'Kar, stark and glorious and forever lost.

His parents wedding photo, both of them so young and bright and full of life.

A smiling Hoshi Sato, aged and beautiful and eyes soft with affection in the golden Tarsus sunlight.

George Samuel Kirk in his cadet reds, laughing on the steps of the Archer Hall, bright and happy and vivid.

The full assembly of the 2258 Starfleet Academy graduating class; the largest in history, taken only weeks before they became the smallest.

One at a time, he hung them in a small alcove by his desk, not visible to the rest of the room; Spock hardly needed the reminder of what he had lost. Neither did Jim, for that matter, but he wanted it – wanted the reminder of how fragile life could be, how quickly the world could fall away beneath you (lest we forget – how often did humans forget, trapped in an endless cycle of forgetting history and repeating it). Morbid, maybe (_you need to read less of those fucking tragedies, kid, I'm the pessimist here_) but somehow _right_.

The rest though – he smiled and chuckled and laughed out loud as he hung the rest, reliving fond memories, some happier than others. If his smile was softer, more nostalgic than cheerful when he hung an image of he and Sam as grinning, smudged and rough-and-tumbled boys – long before Frank and cars and cliffs and fucking Tarsus – well, there was no one to see but Jupiter suspended past his viewport.

There was Sam and Aurelan and Peter, just a toddler, grinning that trademark Kirk smile (_even the babies smirk, what, is it in the damn genes?_) from his daddy's lap.

He and Bones in their reds, jackets open, studying in the quad (_c'mon, Bones, vitamin D and all that_) during midterms in their second year, caught lounging in the grass and smirking at each other over the top of their PADDs by Gaila and her new holo-imager, some unending bantering conversation (_don't you two ever stop?_) caught in eternal 3D.

Pike in civies, toasting the imager (_if this ends up around campus, Kirk, you'll run laps until the heat death of the universe_) with a long-necked beer bottle, kicked back in a deck chair against the Mojave sky during third year winter break (_you think I'm leaving you alone to your own devices for two weeks? - stop arguing, Kirk, and pack_)

The official holo of the command crew of the _USS Enterprise_ on her mission launch, all of them shiny and bright in their uniforms, clustered around the command chair.

Jim, without a cocky grin or a smug smirk, just a happy expression on his face, a brown-eyed, gap-toothed blonde comfortably cradled in his lap. Joanna McCoy, all of five years old and destined to be a heartbreaker, absolutely confident in her authority and welcome in Jim Kirk's arms.

He grinned at the memory, of Jo – a born McCoy, bossy and insistent and _always_ right (_someone's gotta be right, Uncle Jim, why not me?_) deciding that first meeting that Jim was _her_ uncle and a suitable companion for her daddy (_you gotta take care of him, Uncle Jim, he gets cranky if he don't get enough sleep_) and that he had pretty eyes (_daddy, what so darn funny?_). After that first stay with her daddy – the threat of Starfleet's JAG Office if Jocelyn Treadway didn't adhere to the terms of her husband's visitation rights had quickly ended any attempts to prevent a visit to San Francisco – Jo had insisted on talking to Jim when ever she comm'd her father (_jeez, daddy, I gots to make sure he's doing his job_) and resisted any attempts on Jim's part to let them have time to themselves whenever she visited their shared dorm. Since Bones found the sight of any female – much less a three-foot, lisping one – wrap one James T. Kirk around her little finger fucking _hilarious_ (_god help you if you have kids, Jim_), Jim had spent most of Bones' visits with Jo right there with them, even dragging him to Georgia between second and third year (_I'll never here the end of it, either from Jo or my mom; suck it up, kid_).

He settled in his desk chair, examining the room (his Ready Room, for fuck's sake, when did this become his life?) from the place that was most _his_; seeing the gleam of his mek'leth blade and d'ktahg and naga kris dagger along side the shimmer of holo images of those few people he loved and who loved him; of his books beneath curved steel blades and bone knives, the scent of paper and the leather of his chairs filling the clean, purified ship's air; Bones' grin and Jo's smile and his brother's family balancing those gone and lost; pieces of the man who'd _dared_ him to do better lingering in the room he'd made his own, silent and supportive and _there_, while his console was filled with reports and files and inventories waiting for a signature or captain's approval. Captain James Tiberius Fucking Kirk, welcome to your life.

"You done for the day, kid?"

There was Bones in his medical blues leaning in the doorway, brows arched pointedly (fuck Spock and his Vulcan eyebrows; _no one_ expressed more with a single eyebrow than Leonard McCoy). Jim knew what that look meant; it meant that there was no acceptable answer but 'Yes, Bones' and that if he didn't stop what he was doing voluntarily he'd be nagged at and dragged off for a meal and prodded into relaxing. It had taken a while, but Joanna wasn't the only McCoy who could make Jim Kirk dance to their tune.

"Yeah, for now. What do you think?"

He took his time, gaze dancing around the room (pointedly skipping over the wide expanse of space visible, just to be an ass), sauntering over to the alcove that he shouldn't be aware of but was and somehow knew what would be there, even though Jim hadn't known what he was going to do with the space until a few hours ago (_I know how your mind works, kid – when it does, that is_). He crossed his arms and furrowed his brow (this one meaning _I shouldn't put up with your attempts to hide who you are behind that cocky grin, but I do anyway_) and then glared pointedly at the lethal Tholian kartika knife beside the ships' computer interface. After one last glance around, he nodded. "Suits you." Then he frowned at Jim (_your _captain_, Bones, now you have to obey me – yeah, that'll happen, kid_) and grumbled, "When's the last time you ate – never mind, it was too long ago. Let's go, _Captain_," before heading for the door, knowing Jim would follow. He always did.

_Suits you_. That sounded a lot like _welcome home_ to him.


End file.
